La teoria dell'indoeuropeo tra il mito delle origini e la storia: Sulla creatività dei linguisti.

In this paper I will examine some aspects of the Indo-European theory as an example of scientific creativity. Particularly, I will focus on the first generations of scholars (Jones, Schlegel, Bopp, Grimm, Pott, and Schleicher), also referring to the ideological and cultural effects of the reception (and exploitation) of the discipline. The aim is to point out the fact that, since the first developments of the Indo-European studies, two different conceptions of the reconstructive method and its heuristic capacities are created. I will try to detect the danger, from the point of view of the solidity of the outcomes, but also from that of ideological exploitation, of the reification of the Proto-Indo-European language, and I will propose the abandonment of the persistent idea of original perfection: the myth of the origin is misleading and must therefore be reversed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]